


Scottish

by thepadfoots



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-07
Updated: 2014-07-07
Packaged: 2018-02-07 20:40:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1913109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepadfoots/pseuds/thepadfoots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One shot. The Ravenclaw beauty and the Hufflepuff poster boy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scottish

When you open your mouth and a Scottish accent comes out, people are surprised. You speak English _really_ well, they say, and you nod politely as if your first words hadn’t been some form of ‘mum’ like 99% of the Hogwarts population. It gets better after a while—eleven year olds don’t really care where you’re from, as long as you’re nice and share your Honeyduke packages—so when the Beauxbatons delegation arrives your fifth year and that strange new potato dish appears on the table, you and Marietta Edgecombe, who’s also from Scotland, laugh and tell everyone that those stovies are nothing new, _really_.

Still, that night when Roger Davies coaxes you to sneak up to the Astronomy Tower with him, he calls you exotic. You call him silly. Your grandparents are Chinese, but you have lived in Scotland all your life. Yet you follow him to the Astronomy Tower anyway, and let his ice blue eyes slide over your body because, for once, having porcelain skin and jet black hair makes you beautiful instead of just abnormal. For a while, at least, you are exotic.

Those Beauxbaton girls are exotic too, though, especially that one with flowing blonde hair Davies fawns over all the way to the Yule Ball. You take that news unexpectedly well. Deep inside, you always knew you couldn’t compete with a Beauxbaton girl. They are French, and that’s the kind of exotic Hogwarts boys really want.

Except the Hufflepuff one, the one with grey eyes you had a crush on back in third year. Cedric Diggory, from Ottery St. Catchpole. He finds you by the lake, takes you aside under a beech tree as your friends giggle in the background, and shyly asks if _you_ will go the Yule Ball with _him_. He shouldn’t be this shy. He needn’t be shy at all, because ‘yes’ tumbles out of your mouth with no reservation. He is so very handsome.

And good. And sweet. So deliciously, blithely sweet. He kisses you unexpectedly your first date at Madame Puddifoot’s Teashop, and then again in the alleyway behind Zonko’s. When you come up for breath and take a peak at this boy who makes your nerves tingle, his eyes remain closed as his lips reach for another taste.

Christmas Eve, you are nervous entering the Great Hall wearing the dressrobe your grandmother picked out for you, the one so very obviously Chinese. You want to be proud but you don’t want to be exotic, not again. He offers you his arm, though, and murmurs how pretty you are without expecting a kiss in return. You give him one anyway.

You are the thing he will miss most. You didn’t know that. Perhaps he wasn’t ready to have you know that. But the first question out of his mouth, amidst the deafening cheers of the crowd, is “Are you okay?” He holds you tight and insists you wrap yourself with more towels, pauses from waving to the crowd to kiss you and rest his forehead on yours. The next day, as you tuck your head into the crook of his neck, something drives you to say your name is actually Zhang Qiu, a name much lighter to say than the thudding Cho Chang. A proper name, not just two surnames stuck together as a result of messy documentation. It’s the first time you’ve told anyone that, although afterward you tell all of your friends. But he is the first, and he knows now that you feel the same about him as he does about you. There is no confusion. Being with him makes you so much surer of yourself. If a boy like him can love all of a girl like you, then you should be able to love every part of yourself too.

You visit the cemetery, two years later, after all the tears have faded away. There is a war raging on beyond the gates, a war that took your love as one of its first casualties. You remember how lost you were without him, your sweet boy who made you feel beautiful instead of abnormal. You remember how your shields cracked into little pieces, and your laughter suddenly chimes through the free autumn wind. Because after you stopped looking for boys to hold you together, you reforged yourself. Here lies Cedric Diggory. Kind. Selfless. Brave. And here you stand. Determined to fight until the very end. Loving him made sure nothing will break you again.


End file.
